"[O]nly you and I in all that garden"

Quote of the day

8

“You never seem to be waiting for me, but we kept meeting at every turn of the paths. Behind every bush, at the foot of each statue, near every pond. It is as if it had been only you and I in all that garden.”

To me it seems like a matter of perception: one person seeing the other everywhere, despite their bumping into each other being mostly random. Or, perhaps she/he is subconsciously seeking out the other. That’s the kind of silly thing that people in love tend to do.

JM:

Shadowy figure, you are oh-so secretly a love sick kitten, aren’t ya?

JM:

Tammy, a prof of mine once said that Romeo and Juliet wasn’t a literal tale in the sense that the young lovers don’t literally die at the end, but that rather this is the symbol of the death of romantic love. It’s a rather bold interpretation, I know, but I found it most interesting. I do, in my very old age, tend to agree: that the love that sustains a long, adult relationship is different from the kind that often sustains much poetry, pop music and, dare I admit, novel writing.

JM:

I knew you wouldn’t like my first comment, but there it is.

Shadowy figure:

Love sick, sick of love, whatever. I regret using the word at all, it having so many meanings that would have driven Wittgenstein mad (or who knows, maybe it did).

But I am also reminded of the French NovelLe “Grand Meaulnes” by French author Alain Fournier (1913) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Grand_Meaulnes “Meaulnes searches for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood”

Though different in plot line from “Last Year at Marienbad”, “Grand Meaulnes” feels similar in the way that strange relationships are shown to evolve in an oddly surreal manner.